Kirsty Scott successfully defends thesis
On April 7, 2026, Kirsty Scott successfully defended the thesis, “Insights into Unconventional Superconductivity: A Spectroscopic Investigation of Intertwined Electronic States” (advisor: Eduardo Higino da Silva Neto).
Scott explained, “Superconductors are remarkable materials that can carry electricity with zero resistance and already play an important role in modern technologies like medical imaging and quantum computing. However, in many “unconventional” superconductors, we still don’t fully understand what causes this behavior. In my PhD, I studied the electronic structure of these materials using two complementary, highly specialized techniques: scanning tunneling microscopy at Yale and x-ray scattering experiments at synchrotron facilities across North America and Europe. Through these approaches, I aimed to better understand what enables superconductivity and how other electronic phases influence it in notable families of unconventional superconductors.”
Scott continued, This summer, I will start a year-long postdoctoral position at Princeton University to study materials synthesis and next year, I will begin a faculty position at Davidson College.”
Scott added, “I’m excited to continue my research while also shifting my focus towards teaching and making physics more pedagogically accessible to students of a wide-range of academic backgrounds.”
Thesis abstract
In the field of quantum materials, many aspects of unconventional superconductors are persistently not well understood. This is, in part, due to their complex phase diagrams, which feature multiple coexisting phases. However, the same intertwined phases that complicate our ability to unravel these phase diagrams may be responsible for mediating superconductivity. In this work, we turn our focus to these phases: nematicity in Fe-based superconductors, charge order in cuprates, and magnetism in nickelates. In the Fe-based superconductor, FeSe1-xSx, we perform scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies to image nematic fluctuations and their effect on superconducting symmetries, revealing the first experimental evidence of superconductivity mediated by nematic fluctuations. In the cuprate superconductor, Bi2Sr2CaCu2Os+x, we conduct a series of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) experiments to prove the charge-like nature of a novel quasi-circular manifold of correlations and dissect the origin of an unidentified RIXS mode. In the n = 8 Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate parent compound and its oxygen-reduced counterpart, we conduct the first RIXS studies and track their magnetic excitations.
Thesis committee: Eduardo Higino da Silva Neto (advisor), Yu He, Leonid Glazman, Jack Harris, Ming Yi (Rice University)